


when the maker's eyes are closed.

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:18:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Battle of Kirkwall, a few souls struggle to keep on, but the city is burning and hope has run dry. (Warnings for character death and use of a certain slur beginning with 'C'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the maker's eyes are closed.

**i.**

He hadn't expected to open his eyes, ever again.  
He'd rushed into the Circle as soon as the Chantry blew its top, and seen the mayhem spread. Stunned disbelief spun out of control, woven into simmering panic that soon reached a fever pitch -- the wailing of apprentices, the frantic rapid-fire speech of enchanters, and underneath it all, the constant din of the war raging in the center of the Circle and just outside its doors.

In his rushing from room to room, seeking to make himself useful, murmuring breathless prayers as he ran, he found a group of his fellow Formari -- Tranquil, all of them, just _standing._

"What are you doing?" he yelled, eyes flitting from one composed face to another, and his mind reels -- as everything boils into chaos, he's shouting at a collection of mannequins, surely these are not men and women, surely these are porcelain figures and _he is shouting at them_ \--

"Death comes, Solivitus," one speaks, but not ominously, not at all. Pleasantly, even. "Death comes for us all."

And despite what he'd told himself as he left them behind and sought out pockets of frightened apprentices to usher to shelter, despite his adrenaline-fuelled determination, despite the fact that he blinked his eyes open to a sulphury grey morning after all was said and done, he believed.

Death came for them all, swathed in the mantle of War.

**ii.**

If you got out at the same time Hawke and her companions got out, if you had the foresight to see your escape route and take it, you were lucky.  
The chaos in the Gallows reached its peak when the Knight-Commander was made an effigy, her suddenly-leaderless templars in shambles and the Circle a mere husk of stony rubble and blood-slick tile.  
If you were smart, and conscious, you followed Hawke's trail. You got out of the Gallows.

If you were still in the Gallows when the sun rose the next morning, and you weren't dead, you wished you were.

The templars recovered and mobilised, and nothing but desperation and nameless fury drove them. Some of them hadn't been dosed, and they were the dangerous ones -- unfocused and wild-eyed, they ran survivors through whether they were mages or not, and plundered their pockets looking for vials of that precious juice.

Laya and Elinor clutched each other in the dimness, their bones grinding against the rubble and their faces and hands covered with blood and dust. Elinor stared at some spot just beyond Laya's shoulder as the other woman held her, and sometimes she blinked, sometimes.  
"Sing to me, Laya," she croaked, the first words she'd spoken since the bloodcurdling scream she'd let out when she caught a glimpse of the grotesque demon as they escaped from the Circle's halls.

Laya's eyes blurred, but she shook her head.  
"They'll hear me. They'll find us if they hear me."

"They'll find us anyway."  
And Laya knew this to be true, and her spirit gave its last feeble protest, but she opened her mouth and sang. Sang, and waited.

 _So there is a Maker, after all,_ she thinks with eerie calm as the templars come crashing through the rubble, because Elinor is dead before they reach her.

**iii.**

Because he was known amongst merchants, Sol finds sanctuary in Hightown. Sanctuary of a physical sort, anyway.

"They are all dying," he murmurs, his eyes trained on the window even though it is shuttered. "Even if they survived the Circle, they are dying now."

"Yes, and you are alive! There is nothing you can do for them but continue living." Dulci de Launcet is thin, fretting, but firm for once in her life -- she may have let Emile go, but she will not let this one.  
She's convinced herself that he even looks like an older version of her son. Guillaume, shellshocked, lets her do what she will.

"What will _you_ do? All of you? Kirkwall is a police state now, you surely don't mean to stay."

Dulci wrings her hands after she sets a fresh cup of tea before him, tea that he won't drink, not when his stomach is twisted so tightly, not when his throat keeps closing.  
"I tell Guillaume, I tell him we should return to Orlais but... he does not listen. He is... stricken, with malaise, you know. I told him Kirkwall would be too much for him. I told him! And oh, my precious son, look what has happened..."

As she weeps, Solivitus' haunted eyes slide to the shuttered window again.

**iv.**

There is graffiti on almost every building now.

"HAWKE HAS FORSAKEN US". "BURN ALL CHANTRIES". "KILL YOURSELF, MAGES". "HUNT THE CUNT".

Everyone knows that the _'cunt'_ is Hawke.  
Solivitus uses his last lyrium potion to scrub this from the bricks. It is small solace, but there is no solace in this crumbled Kirkwall but the barest crumbs of it.

He does not see them, but he knows he is being watched. They know what he is. He is dressed in clothing Dulci gave him, clothing that her malaise-stricken husband would not miss, but they know what he is.

"You survived. You must live," Dulci stressed, but she could not do the same, not when ruffians bashed the door in and took everything they could, including the de Launcets' lives. And where had Solivitus been, he whom they had been so gracious to shelter?  
He dares not think of it anymore.

Ahead, a pair of templars wrenches a squalling babe from the arms of an equally-distraught mother. A third templar forces her to her knees, onto her stomach, and Solivitus swallows convulsively.

He is too weak for magic now, but not too weak to pick up a broken wooden beam and swing it at the templar. Not too weak to keep swinging until one of the others runs his greatsword right through him.

Down the street, a ruffian no older than Emile de Launcet would have been dips his finger in someone's congealing blood and smears crude letters over the bricks. _"HUNT THE CUNT."_

**v.**

The last graffito to grace a Kirkwall building is surprisingly eloquent, an echo of the soft white clarity that came before the city's last breath, but it is cut brutally short. It is not difficult to figure out why.

_"The reinforcements have arrived. Hawke has forsaken us. We your children are at war, Maker, we your beloved childr--"_


End file.
